


The stars are beautiful at night

by Multifandom_damnation



Category: Titans (TV 2018)
Genre: Best Friends, Blackouts, Families of Choice, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Homesickness, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Stargazing, Team Bonding, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-15
Updated: 2020-01-15
Packaged: 2021-02-24 16:15:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22260775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Multifandom_damnation/pseuds/Multifandom_damnation
Summary: A blackout blanketed all of San Francisco, and Garfield was finally able to enjoy one of the things he missed from being back home with Larry and Rita and Cliff, but what's a little stargazing if you don't get to do it with some company?As Garfield stood on the balcony, head titled backwards so far that is neck started to ache, he realized that while he might not have been able to help Conner to experience the feeling of first snow or the crackling of lightning or the taste of fairyfloss, he may be able to help him see Garfield’s favourite sight in the world.
Relationships: Kon-El | Conner Kent & Garfield Logan
Comments: 10
Kudos: 54





	The stars are beautiful at night

**Author's Note:**

> You guys, I've just finished season 2 of Titans, and let me say, I'm so fucking angry about what they did to Gar. Like, how DARE they. I couldn't even watch the surgery scene- I had to skip it. Like, it's great angst and trauma and all that, but FUCK THEM, you know?? And then NOBODY EVEN ACKNOWLEDGED IT. He might as well not exist at this point. But I love Gar and Conner, and I love their friendship, and I just need more of them being besties. And I mean, come on, if anyone can get Gar to talk about what they did to him without making him feel guilty about what he did, it'll be big, clueless Conner who can see that someone he cares about is hurting and just wants to help. But yeah, I hope you enjoy this! I fucking love Titans, even though it fucks me up at times, so I hope I'm giving back to the fandom what the show gave to me. Happy reading x

A blackout currently blanketed all of San Francisco, and it was the eeriest sight that Garfield had ever seen.

Once Dick had confirmed that it wasn’t any sort of attack and was just a standard blackout, Rose had gone with him to fetch the candles while Hank and Dawn had gone to make a late-night snack and everyone else did whatever it was that they had to do.

In the end, Garfield decided to walk out onto the balcony and rest his arms over the railing as he overlooked the darkened city. It was cool outside, and Garfield was glad that he had his jacket to ward off the chill.

There was a time long ago, a time he would miss, where he would sneak out and lie on the grounds outside his home, on his back in the grass with the blades tickling his face and ants crawling all over him, to watch the stars twinkle in the night sky. They were so far from the city, that none of the lights from the houses and buildings could reach them, and he would be able to look up at the tree canopy and see the stars beyond, bright and dazzling. 

Sometimes the others would sneak out too and would join him on the lawn. Cliff's heavy body would leave a dent in the ground of compressed grass and broken earth. Rita would let her legs swell out, just a little bit at a time until she no longer had any definable lower half. Larry would point out stars and would lie about all the ones the Spirit had visited and would let the ghostly thing watch from its glowing centre in his chest. Garfield would let the tiger come out for just a moment from where it would complain about being bored in his soul. But it really didn't matter because in the dark, nobody could see them, not even each other, and for just a moment, they were normal. But it didn't matter either way.

All that mattered was the stars.

When Garfield looked at Conner, all he felt was heartbreak. He may have been blessed with the wish many people wanted, to be able to experience the world for the first time as adults, but how many things had he not yet seen? Did he know about the colour of fireworks? Did he know about the chill of snow? Did he know what a sunset looked like compared to a sunrise? Did he know what a storm sounded like? Had he ever watched the waves crash into the shore? Had he ever danced in the rain?

Not that Garfield could ever see Superman or Lex Luthor dancing in the rain, but maybe when they were children living on farms at opposite ends of Kansas, splashing in mud puddles in their yellow gumboots and raincoats.

But Conner didn’t know any of that. Maybe second hand, if he was lucky, but somehow, Garfield highly doubted it. None of the Titans tended to be very lucky.

As Garfield stood on the balcony, head titled backwards so far that is neck started to ache, he realized that while he might not have been able to help Conner to experience the feeling of first snow or the crackling of lightning or the taste of fairyfloss, he may be able to help him see Garfield’s favourite sight in the world.

“Hey, Conner!” Garfield called as he ran back inside, throwing the glass double doors shut beside him to a disdainful look from Dawn. “Come on, follow me.”

Conner looked up from his bowl of marshmallows, chocolate and biscuits to frown at Garfield. There was a smear of chocolate at the corner of his lip. Apparently, someone had told him about smores but hadn’t bothered to teach him how to make one, so he was just eating the ingredients like nothing. “What’s wrong? Where are we going?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” Garfield said. “Just… come with me, yeah? Hurry up, who knows how long this blackout is going to last?”

In his excited rush, Garfield didn’t notice Dick standing at the elevator with his arms crossed on his way back from the control room, and he nearly ran into him. “Where do you think you’re going?” Dick asked, all stern like the father-figure he pretended not to be.

“I’m going to show Conner the stars before the power turns back on,” Garfield explained quickly, glancing behind Dick occasionally, keenly aware of how much time they were wasting. “He’s never seen them before, not when there’s no light, you know? First experiences and all that.”

Unsurprisingly, Dick didn’t look convinced. “And where exactly would you be showing him this?”

“Just on the roof,” Garfield said. “Come on, Dick, I’m not going to do anything stupid. It’s me! You know me! You’ve always been able to trust me. What trouble could we get in on the roof? Besides, if Conner decides to jump, I’ll just turn into a giant bird and carry him to safety.”

Dick’s eyebrow rose. “You… can do that?”

“Who knows?” Garfield shrugged. “It’d be cool if I could though. Come on Dick, please? It’s just the roof. I’ll make sure we stay in view of all the security cameras just in case. Besides, how much trouble can we get in just sitting on the roof?”

Eventually, Dick gave in, just as Garfield knew he would, and sighed. “Alright, fine. But be careful, alright? We don’t know how long the lights are going to stay off for, and I don’t want to hear about a green tiger or a young Kryptonian on the news tonight. No running off.”

“Alright, in my defence, that was one time, and it was Jason’s fault anyway,” Garfield said before getting back on track. “But I promise that you’ll find us exactly where you expect.”

“Good,” Dick nodded. Then he cracked a rare smile. “Go on- go have fun. But not too much fun, I don’t want to have to pay for damages.”

Garfield rose his arms up before he realized. “Uh- do you want a hug?”

“A hug?” Dick frowned. “Gar, you’re only going to the roof. This is not a goodbye-hug situation.”

“Um, right, yeah. Thanks, Dick,” Garfield grinned as he swiftly passed Dick and jumped into the elevator before the doors could close. Realistically, Garfield didn’t need to ask Dick permission to do anything unless it was dangerous, risky or stupid, but after everything that they had been through, he knew that it was better to let him know where he was than to disappear and have him send out a search party to go look for him.

By the time Dick walked away shaking his head and laughing under his breath, Conner and Krypto had joined Garfield at the elevator. “Hurry up already!”

Neither of them hastened their step, but both of them made it to the open elevator before the doors slid shut, Conner wearing a confused frown and Krypto looking very excited to be going on an adventure. “Where are we going?” Conner asked, and the confusion in his voice would have been painful if it weren’t for what Garfield knew was going to happen. “Are we leaving?”

“No, big guy, if we were leaving we would be going down. But we’re going up to the roof,” Garfield waved at the digital numbers slowly increasing on the screen. Then he turned to Conner and put his hands eagerly on either side of his face. “Listen, Conner, do you trust me?”

A smile broke across Conner’s face. “Of course I do. You’re my best friend, why wouldn’t I trust you?”

“Great, fantastic, glad to hear it,” The numbers were almost finished their counting, and Garfield knew that he would have to make this quick, otherwise the surprise would be ruined forever. He only got one chance at this, and he was going to make sure that he did it right. “When we get outside, I need you to look at me, alright? Look only at me, because I want to show you something, and it’s going to change your life. But I just want you to trust me, alright? Trust that I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”

There was a long pause that Garfield should have expected. They had both been hurt by people they trusted, people who promised them kindness and love and who had only given them pain and trauma in return. Realistically, Garfield shouldn’t have expected a positive answer at all, but Conner was young, and he didn’t know when it was time to stop trusting people. In that matter, Garfield was glad that he had the tiger for that.

But then the elevator doors were opening and Krypto ran out onto the rooftop with an excited bark, and Conner still had his eyes locked on Garfield’s. “Alright,” he said. “I trust you. Lead the way.”

Smiling, Garfield slowly backed out of the elevator, keeping a tight hold to the side of Conner’s face, and never for a second did his eyes look away, just like he promised. Garfield had been on the roof plenty of times, so he didn’t even have to turn around to make sure he wasn’t walking on any of the raised parts, but even though Conner couldn’t see, he did as he promised. Garfield was so close that he could see the fear that shone in his eyes the further out they got, and when he stumbled over his own feet. “Gar,” Conner’s voice was low as he raised his hands to rest them on the back of Garfield’s on his face. “Gar, I’m going to trip. I’m going to fall.”

“Don’t worry,” Garfield reassured. “You won’t. I won’t let you.”

When Garfield was happy with how far out they had gotten, he stopped walking, and Conner’s gaze got more intense. “Alright,” he said. “I’m going to let go of you, and then I want you to look _up_. But I don’t want you to freak out. I just want you to enjoy it. Can you do that for me?”

“Yeah,” Conner said, very eager and very desperate at this point. “I can do that Gar.”

“Good,” Garfield said as he let go and stepped back. “Look up.”

Conner looked up so quickly that if he were a normal human he would have given himself whiplash. But Garfield got the pleasure of watching Conner’s eager face turn slack and his jaw open up as he looked at the multitude of twinkling stars.

It was lovely, but Garfield had seen it dozens of times before, so he knelt on the ground to pet Krypto and let Conner enjoy his moment.

A long-time later Conner spoke. “It’s beautiful,” his voice was airy. “Wow.”

“Yeah man,” Garfield laughed, looking up too. Even Krypto was looking. “Pretty cool, huh? Not bad for your first time.”

“They’re so big. It looks like they’re close,” Conner reached a hand up and his fingers curled delicately in the air as if imagining his palm caressing the curve of a star. “So close I could almost touch them.”

“ _You_ probably could,” Garfield laughed as Krypto rolled over and stuck his legs in the air to ask for belly rubs. “But the rest of us non-Kryptonians could only dream of getting anywhere near them. It’s scientifically impossible. This is the closest we’re ever gonna get.”

The shining of the stars reflected in Conner’s iris. “There’s just so many. I couldn’t count them all.” he sounded awed. “Where do they go? I’ve seen the sky plenty of times and I’ve never seen them. Not like this, anyway.”

Garfield licked his lips. He wasn’t a scientist in any sense of the word apart from ‘scientific experiment’, so he wasn’t really qualified to answer those, and he almost thought about going downstairs to ask Dick or Kory about how the stars worked, but somehow he didn’t think that Conner would wait that long. “Well,” he said. “You don’t see them during the day because the sun comes out. It’s much closer than any of those stars you see, so it’s much brighter, and it’s brighter than the stars. And at night, you can only see a couple of them because we’re always in the city, but they’re always there. They don’t go anywhere.”

“Then how come I’ve never seen them like this before?” Conner asked, and that confusion was back again, masking his awe.

Shrugging, Garfield waved at the city, and Conner pulled his gaze away from the stars for just long enough to see where he was pointing. “Light pollution man. Too much light dulls the sky and it’s not dark enough for the stars to come out. That’s why I’ve brought you up here during a blackout- the best time to see the stars is far away from the city, or in the dark or something.”

“So the weakness of light is… light?” Conner asked. Garfield couldn’t help but laugh. He suspected that Conner probably didn’t care about the answer, because his neck was already tilted back as he watched the stars twinkle.

Smiling, Garfield rearranged himself so he was lying horizontal, his feet facing the darkened city, and reached up to tug at the closet part of fabric attached to Conner that Garfield could reach. “Hey man, come here. You’re going to get a sore neck doing that. This is better.” When Garfield finally managed to get Conner’s attention, he manhandled him to the ground and only when he was sitting on the concrete did Garfield pull him backwards. "This way is much better."

Once Conner had adjusted himself to be comfortable on the hard concrete, Krypto padded over and made himself comfy between the two, and curled up on the ground. Garfield watched as Conner’s eyes sparkled with the reflection of the stars, and a selfish part of him hoped that Conner's first experience of the faraway cosmos was a good one, partially because of him.

They sat in silence for a while, nothing but Krypto's snoring and the sounds of the outraged populous of San Francisco down bellow, annoyed that the blackout was interrupting their favourite TV show. Every now and then, Garfield would turn to look at Conner and the awe sketched on his face before he turned back to the stars and revelled in the silence of each others company.

Eventually, the silence was broken, surprisingly, by Conner. “This is nice,” he said. “Nice and quiet, just the two of us. We don’t really get time away after what happened.”

The last thing Garfield wanted to do was talk about what happened, so he pillowed his head on his arms and changed the subject. “You’re right. It’s not often that I come out here to admire the stars but I’m glad that I did this time. I hope you’re enjoying it. I remember my first time, and it was in the jungle out in the middle of nowhere, not on the roof of a building in San Franciso.”

He was so intent on focusing on the stars and thinking about nothing else that he hadn’t noticed Conner’s head turned to face him. “Gar,” Conner said, and despite how soft his voice was, Garfield could still feel himself tensing as if preparing for a blow. “What did they do to you? I wasn’t there when they brought you into Cadmus. I didn’t see you at all. But… I know they did something bad to you like they did to me, but I still don’t really know what that is.”

“Come on, Conner, man,” Garfield was still trying not to think about it. “We don’t have to bring this up now…”

“But I want to know,” Conner insisted. For the first time ever, Garfield was regretting getting so close to Conner. "I don't know you very well, but even I can tell that you're acting strange. And I want to know what they did to you so I can understand why you don't leave your room or listen to music or leave the tower by yourself. I just… I don't know. I think I just want to help."

"Look, bud, I know you're trying to be nice and all, but I really, _really_ don't want to talk about that right now," Garfield tried to be civil, but he wasn't sure if Conner would understand subtlety or if he would be offended by Garfield's outright refusal not to indulge him. "I just want to watch the stars before the lights come back on, alright?"

Despite his insistence, Conner was still looking at him with bright, searching eyes, and Garfield was forced to look away. "Will we _ever_ talk about it? Not now, but… soon?"

"Maybe," Garfield said, "Someday. But you know that you don't just have to talk about it with me, right? About what they made you do? There are lots of other people here who would probably like to hear it, like Dick or Kory or Dawn."

"I know," Conner said, "but I want to talk about it with you."

It was all Garfield could do to close his eyes to keep himself from crying and hold his tongue to stop himself from screaming. His chest ached with something he tried not to think about and the rounded scar on the back of his head covered by a mop of green hair started to thrum like it had its own heartbeat, and he wished that he wasn't lying down on it so he could rub the discomfort away. "Just watch the stars, Conner. They're not going to be around for much longer."

Finally, Conner turned his piercing gaze away from the side of Garfield's face and instead directed it back to the stars. “Do you think that if I shoot my lasers upwards that it would hit one of the stars?”

“You know,” Garfield laughed softly. “I’m not quite sure. They’re very far away, and you’d have to be a very good shot. But I wouldn’t test it in case you could and you blow one up or something.”

Conner hummed, sounding a little disappointed. “I guess you’re right.”

It was right then, in the silence and the company and the comfort, that Garfield realized how tired he truly was, and he found his eyes closing as he dozed off. Krypto was still snoring softly in his sleep and Conner was still talking softly to himself about how pretty the stars were and how Eve would have loved to see them, and for the first time in a long time, Garfield was able to close his eyes without feeling the pain in the back of his head or his tiger growling and scratching at his insides or the echoing sound of music rattling around in his head or the taste of blood heavy on his tongue and coating the inside of his mouth. He didn’t sleep often these days- he was too afraid of what he would find when he woke up and was sick of hearing Mercy’s voice, commanding and praising, telling him everything he wanted to hear…

He was snapped out of his slumber by a loud rattling, a bright flash, cheers from down below, and Conner sitting upright so fast that even Krypto jumped in surprise. “Where… where did the stars go?”

Grunting, Garfield lifted himself to his elbows and surveyed the streets of San Francisco. Every window in every office building, apartment block, humble home and skyscraper was lit, the street lights were illuminating the streets, the parks and arenas were shining, and the stars were nothing more than a couple of random dots in the sky. “They’re still up there,” Garfield said. “But the city has power again, so now it’s too bright for us to see them. They’re really far away.”

“Oh,” Conner couldn’t mask his disappointment even if he wanted to. “But I didn’t want them to leave yet.”

“Unfortunately, big guy, it’s not our choice. But the good news is that they'll always be up there, even if we can't see them,” Garfield sat up all the way and slowly, reluctantly, Conner did the same. Garfield clapped him on the shoulder. “How did you enjoy your first experience with star gazing?”

Conner turned to face Garfield again, but the look on his face was a very different one from the hour before. “I’d give you a hug but I’ve been told that if I hug you too hard I might break every bone in your body,” he said shyly. “Thanks, Gar. I… I’m glad you’re my friend.”

Beaming, Garfield shimmied around and opened his arms as wide as he could for a hug. “Break away, big man! If you think you can entice me with the offer of a hug and not follow through, then you’ve got another thing coming.”

The grin that spread across Conner’s face was large, genuine and goofy and he immediately wrapped his arms around Garfield for the greatest hug he had ever had in his life. Sure, it hurt a little more than a normal hug did, but he’d never been so enveloped by a person's arms before and it sort of felt like he was drowning in comfort. Even Krypto tried to force his nose between them to join. “Alright, alright,” Garfield gasped, voice muffled by Conner’s shirt, and Conner pulled away, but thankfully, not entirely. “Are you ready to go inside?”

“No,” Conner said honestly. “Let's go.”

Laughing, they helped each other up, Krypto leaping and rolling across the roof, and as they made their way towards the elevator that led back down to the Titans headquarters, Garfield swung an arm over Conner’s wide shoulders. “Don’t worry man,” he promised. “Next time, I’ll convince Dick to let us go on a little excursion, and I’ll show you fireworks.”

Conner’s brow furred. “What are fireworks? Are they better than stars?”

“Maybe,” Garfield said as they made it to the elevator. “But I’ll let you decide that for yourself.”

**Author's Note:**

> (Also, by what I'd seen about the show before it came out on Netflix, I was so sure that the airport Donna goodbye scene would be the VERY LAST scene of the show, and when there was more after that, I was SO SHOCKED. GUYS!! GAR FINALLY GOT TO MEET BATMAN!!)  
> I've got so many fics in the works guys you don't understand. It's driving me crazy. But don't worry, I'm going to have a fic with them talking about what they did to Gar, and let me tell you, there's a chance that it'll probably with Conner- that's the logical choice, yeah? They were both used by Mercy and Cadmus, but Conner is too... not stupid, but he dull?? He wouldn't understand why Gar would be so upset and guilty because, OF COURSE, it wasn't his fault, they used him, why does he feel like that if he knows that he had no choice?? You know??? anyway, I guess what I'm saying is stay tuned for THAT


End file.
